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Poignant voyage to Trident scene

Fight goes on to prove vessel unstable

A RELATIVE of two fishermen, lost off the Caithness coast with five of her colleagues, made an emotional trip to the scene of tragedy, at the weekend.
Jeannie Ritchie who lost her husband and her father, says it has strengthened her resolve to prove that the Trident was unstable, a conclusion disputed by the Department of Transport.
The exact location of the wreck wasn’t discovered until a few years ago, when Orkney divers, searching for a World War Two battleship, HMS Exmouth came across the trawler, on the seabed. Relatives of her crew mounted a successful campaign to have an inquiry into her loss, reopened. It found that no-one was to blame and that the sinking had been caused by a sudden and catastrophic capsize.
Mr Ritchie visited the wreck, on Saturday, to return a ship’s lamp which had been wrongly removed from the Trident during a survey. She sailed to the scene of the wreck, 200 feet below the surface, on Wick lifeboat, and watched as lamp went back to its rightful place to the strains of a lament, played by second coxswain, Ivor Sutherland. A short service was held, after which wreaths were laid.
Mrs Ritchie has said that the Transport Department’s ruling is not an end to the Trident story and she is determined to pursue it which might mean petitioning the European Court of Human Rights.IN another poignant ceremony, at the weekend, the men of a merchant ship which foundered off the North Head, at Wick, were officially remembered.
The fifteen seaman were drowned after the Isleford developed engine trouble and was driven onto rocks below Proundfoot on the north side of the bay.
Caithness Lord Lieutenant, Anne Dunnet unveiled a memorial plaque at the Kirkhill garden, on Sunday, after the names of those lost, in January, 1942, were read out.
Only two bodies out of the entire crew were recovered. A considerable amount of ammunitions and mines came ashore, at the time and further amouns have spilled onto the seabed over the years.